The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented. February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill.

Congratulations, by the Way: Some Thoughts on Kindness

Three months after George Saunders gave a convocation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of The New York Times, where its simple, uplifting message struck a deep chord. Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders’s words tap into a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Powerful, funny, and wise, Congratulations, by the Way is an inspiring message from one of today’s most influential and original writers.

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.

Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002)

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening. But never before have they been available in print. Now, in Theft by Finding, Sedaris brings us his favorite entries. From deeply poignant to laugh-out-loud funny, these selections reveal with new intimacy a man longtime fans only think they know.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect. It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it.

Anything Is Possible: A Novel

Here are two sisters: One trades self-respect for a wealthy husband while the other finds in the pages of a book a kindred spirit who changes her life. The janitor at the local school has his faith tested in an encounter with an isolated man he has come to help; a grown daughter longs for mother love even as she comes to accept her mother's happiness in a foreign country; and the adult Lucy Barton (the heroine of My Name Is Lucy Barton, the author's celebrated New York Times best seller) returns to visit her siblings after 17 years of absence.

Jesus' Son

Recently adapted for the screen, this now-classic collection of 10 stories from the author of Resuscitation of a Hanged Man and Angels is narrated by a young man, a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict whose dependencies have led him to petty crime, cruelty, betrayal, and various kinds of loss.

Get in Trouble: Stories

She has been hailed by Michael Chabon as "the most darkly playful voice in American fiction" and by Neil Gaiman as "a national treasure." Now Kelly Link's eagerly awaited new collection - her first for adult listeners in a decade - proves indelibly that this bewitchingly original writer is among the finest we have.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis: Complete Collection

Lydia Davis is one of our most original and influential writers, a storyteller celebrated for her emotional acuity, her formal inventiveness, and her ability to capture the mind in overdrive. She has been called "an American virtuoso of the short story form" ( Salon.com ) and "one of the quiet giants... of American fiction" (Los Angeles Times Book Review ). This volume contains all her stories to date, from the acclaimed "Break It Down" (1986) to the 2007 National Book Award nominee "Varieties of Disturbance".

Joy Williams has been celebrated as a master of the short story for four decades, her renown passing from one generation to the next even in the shifting landscape of contemporary writing. And at long last the incredible scope of her singular achievement is put on display: 33 stories drawn from three much-lauded collections and another 13 appearing here for the first time in book form.

A Horse Walks into a Bar

In a little dive in a small Israeli city, Dov Greenstein, a comedian a bit past his prime, is doing a night of stand-up. In the audience is a district court justice, Avishai Lazar, whom Dov knew as a boy, along with a few others who remember Dov as the awkward, scrawny kid who walked on his hands to confound the neighborhood bullies. Gradually, teetering between hilarity and hysteria, Dov's patter becomes a kind of memoir, taking us back into the terrors of his childhood.

After a violent coup in the United States overthrows the Constitution and ushers in a new government regime, the Republic of Gilead imposes subservient roles on all women. Offred, now a Handmaid tasked with the singular role of procreation in the childless household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost everything, even her own name.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

Goodbye, Columbus: And Five Short Stories

Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin - he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills - meet one summer and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella, the first book published by Philip Roth, explores issues of both class and Jewish assimilation into American culture. It won the National Book Award in 1960.

The Underground Railroad (Oprah's Book Club)

The Newest Oprah Book Club 2016 Selection. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood - where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned - Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

Exit West: A Novel

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet - sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors - doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price.

Publisher's Summary

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.

In the taut opener, "Victory Lap", a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home", a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill - the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December - through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit - not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness".

An excellent collection of short stories.<br/><br/>I won't get into the details of the book. There are plenty of reviews that do that. I would like to say that if you have never read George Saunders, his writing style is very unique. He is fresh and original. On paper I would image he may be a little hard to follow. Read out loud though and you get the full effect of his writing. He writes much like people talk and that doesn't always translate into the best reading experience. Because his writing is like no one else, intelligently written and unafraid to go where others fear, it is hard not to like him. All that is required is an open mind.<br/><br/>The author did a good job narrating. Yes, someone else may have done better but his performance didn't hurt the listening experience. Listen to a sample and judge for yourself. I gave him 3 stars but 3 1/2 would be more accurate. <br/><br/>The only problem I have with the book is the poor job Random House Audio did in dividing out the chapters. Often it doesn't matter but with a short story collection it is helpful if the audio book chapters line up with the book chapters. They do not. Someone at Random House needs to find a new profession. I found one story I could not finish (The Semplica Girl Diaries). I spent god knows how long trying to find the end of the story. It is harder than you think. I didn't know if I was still in the same story or if I had jumped into the next. It was a real pain. Some of these stories should be listened to again and again. Being able to find them easily is something Random House should have considered. I took the time to locate the chapter start times.<br/><br/>Victory Lap 00:00<br/>Sticks 33:55<br/>Puppy 36:03<br/>Escape From Spiderhead 53:20<br/>Exhortation 1:41:25<br/>Al Roosten 1:50:52<br/>The Seplica Girl Diaries 2:15:17<br/>Home 3:51:43<br/>My Chivalric Fiasco 4:32:13<br/>The Tenth of December 4:48:52

I'm late to the George Saunders fan club, but Tenth of December was amazing. Belongs on the same shelf as Pynchon, McCarthy and DFW in the pantheon of amazing American writers. He has a voice that captures the depth and vibrations of America's modern tragicomedy. He dances on the same ground as David Foster Wallace. The sophistication of his prose is amazing. He writes on a tightrope of madness and morality. There were a couple stories that were objectively only four stars, but emotionally, I wanted to finish this collection of short stories and run out and buy, beg or steal all Saunders other work. If that isn't a reason to give a book five stars, well my whole system of celestial ratings is completely F-ed.

I suppose for some, these kind of edgy stories might be commonplace, but, honestly, I have never read anything like this book. I am used to going from point A to point B with all of the numerous offshoots that an author can muster but I just had to hold on with this journey. The stories are complex, strange and wonderfully buoyant. They are beautifully written so I never let go of where Saunders chose to take me - I loved this read. One needs to be pushed off one's assumptions every once in a while.

"The best art has its reference points in real life." By Carver's definition, Tenth of December is the best art. Saunders looks at people in the context of our culture and reflects them back through his writing with unflinching accuracy. It's acerbic, dark, even frightening, and at the same time Saunders can elicit a contradictory pathos and humor, that brings us back to the yin and yang of real life, like no other author. It is that tragicomic element and Saunders' compassion that keeps the light twinkling in some dark moments in these stories.

I had read a few of these vignettes in The New Yorker, and had read Civilwarland in Bad Decline before this purchase. This compilation of stories is a bit of a departure from Saunders previous writing and seems also more human and real. The characters are challenged or damaged by societal judgements, relationships, the roll of the dice...but there is a redemptive quality that comes through in each situation. The interior monologues are just brilliant; authentic, whether it is a 14 yr. old diva who realizes she has just opened the door to a murderous rapist (Victory Lap, my favorite) or an old man dying of cancer and bent on suicide (Tenth of December). Saunders gets into their heads--the reference point feels as real as it gets, your emotional response to the stories tells you so.

I can't recall ever seeing so many literary giants' names attached to a book, like *Product Placement/Integration*, by the critics...Vonnegut, Pynchon, Twain, Checkhov, Orwell, Hemmingway, Barthelme, Wallace, Joyce, and O'Connor...but Saunders is an original that is genius. This truly may be "the best book you'll read this year." [NYTimes]

Bonus that Saunders reads his own work, but he speaks rapidly and words run together-- you may want to keep your device at regular speed instead of 2x. With the quick shifts of character consciousness, there are times that it's also difficult to distinguish which character is speaking. For readers that aren't sure about reading a volume of short stories, this is a great collection by an author that is considered the master of the genre. The 10 stories have different themes and pacing; you experience a bubble effect that I preferred to savour rather than jump immediately into the next story. Short stories are perfect for days when that *real life* conflicts with the desire to read all day.

These stories are all modern, somewhat dark, explorations into the meaning of the mind, emotions, belief, and will. As such, the language, situations and characters may be quite off-putting to many. Question such as how malleable are our deepest desires and is romantic love simply a chemical reaction may be uncomfortable questions to explore. I don’t mind uncomfortable and found these stories fascinating, thought provoking and enjoyable. None of these stories were predicable, commonplace, or simplistic (the most common sins of the short story). The author’s narration is excellent, bringing subtle emotions to the unusual characters in unfamiliar situations. Sometimes the characters are talking fast, so the listener has to be attentive. Many of the stories border on science fiction but remain firmly literary explorations. I would not recommend these stories for young/pre-teens or the faint of heart. This is probably not the best book you will read this year, but it is a good listen if you appreciate looking at all sides of human emotions.

No duds to be found in this short story collection. What I like is how unassuming the 'tagonists are. (They aren't really 'pro-' or 'ant-'.) Many of the characters have a fragile psyche and plenty of self-doubt and guilt for everyone. The prose remains fascinating and unpredictable, juxtaposing an impressive vocabulary with the simple internalizing that usually goes unspoken. As with any writer, it was cool to see recurring themes, phrases, and concepts that he circled back to, and yet I never knew where each story was ultimately headed. There was social commentary, sci-fi, po-mo, slice-of-life family drama set in the near future, and ultimately a large amount of creativity. I also found a few of his articles in the New Yorker to be entertaining/thought-provoking. He reads his own work well, and sounds good sped up to the 1.25 setting.

What made the experience of listening to Tenth of December the most enjoyable?

Saunders has a unique writing style that is perfectly expressed by his own narration. It's not always a good idea for an author to read his/her own works---narration is usually better left to the professionals---but in this case it works. I can't imagine these stories in anyone else's voice. This is a mind-blowing work worthy of the praise he's getting, such as the New York Times already naming this the best book of the year.

If you could sum up Tenth of December in three words, what would they be?

Funny, Insightful, Heartbreaking

What did you like best about this story?

These characters are so flawed and make such terrible decisions that they are sort of a parody of the dark side of human nature, and yet, they are so funny and sweet and rendered in such an interesting way that you can't help but love them in spite of their exasperating mistakes and misunderstandings.

What does George Saunders bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I have read all of Saunders' previous story collections and essays on paper and loved them, but to hear them read in his own voice, with his local-guy Midwestern accent was really a treat. The stories are really suited to oral story-telling. I would love to see Saunders read Civilwarland, Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation for Audible, as well.

If you could rename Tenth of December, what would you call it?

Some of the story titles are works of art in themselves. I particularly liked, "My Chivalric Fiasco".

Any additional comments?

If you have ever wondered why people seem to act against their own best interests, if you have ever wondered how people get into debt, or why people sometimes seem to treat one another cruelly, George Saunders characters are beautiful portals into the lives of people whom you might not otherwise understand. You understand what it is like to be a moody teenager, a sensitive child, soldier home from a war zone, a guy stuck in a soul-sucking job, or a parent who just wants his or her kids to have a childhood a little less painful than his or her own. If the intent of a literary work is get you to willingly inhabit the life of another and look at the world through his or her eyes, this collection is a literary accomplishment.

The New York Times gives high praise to George Saunders’ book, “Tenth of December”. There are reviewers that disagree with Kakutani’ and Cowles’ laudatory comments about Saunders’ book of short stories but once a listener steps on the cracked ice of “Tenth of December’s” last story, he/she becomes a Saunders’ fan.

Saunders seduces a listener with simple phrasing–pulling one into a story and then ambushing the unwary with crystal clear insight to human foibles, self-delusions, and false dependencies. Saunders sees that measuring one’s success by possessions defines you as an inanity, an empty symbol of humanity. What we do; not just what we think is what we become.